>> 26 May 2004

AND THIS IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE UNITED NATIONS...

On April 7 Kofi Annan, the Nobel laureate, said that "the international community cannot stand idle" and proposed an "action plan to prevent genocide, involving the whole United Nations system" so that there would not be another Rwanda. This was widely reported and Kofi was given a sympathetic hearing.

On Friday, May 7, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertran Ramcharan, after a two-week trip to the Darfur province in Sudan by a U.N. delegation, told the U.N. Security Council that the government of Sudan "armed and supported Arab militias that allegedly expelled more than a million villagers in Sudan's Darfur province and killed thousands." The corpses are those of black Africans. Both the Arab Janjaweed militias and the victims are Muslims.

Also on May 7, Human Rights Watch, which, reporting from the killing grounds, has done an extraordinarily detailed, continuing account of these horrors, issued a 77-page report, documenting "how Sudanese government forces have overseen and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians, burning of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long-inhabited by the [black] Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups."

So, what did the UN decide to do when it met on May 7? Nothing. They'll keep it under review and discuss it in June. Apologies to those murdered between now and then. Tough love - Kofi style.